Past, Present, Nothing
by Child-of-the-Dawn
Summary: A Companion to 'The Other Side of Dawn' in my Commander Laura series. Saul's POV around the time of the attacks and back to his childhood. BA/LR, slight ST/TA.


Title: Past, Present, Nothing

Genre: Introspection/Friendship/Angst

Characters: Saul Tigh, Laura Roslin/Bill Adama ref.

Series: Commander Laura (begins with 'The Other Side of Dawn') READ FIRST!

Rating: K/PG

Summary: Another companion to 'The Other Side of Dawn'. Saul Tigh reacts to the news that the Pegasus, and his friend Laura, were docked at a major bombing site during the attacks.

* * *

Saul Tigh was a screw up.

This was not the opinion of just others, it was his own as well. But that didn't stop him from giving his all as a student. He was always loyal, funny in his own right, and a damn good shot with his father's rifle.

So when he met William Adama, the latter liked him immediately and the two became friends. They were twelve and fifteen, but they hung out as often as possible and seemed inseparable. But they were boys, and so didn't really need much reason to just be boys. Saul loved the younger kid like his own brother, and soon became friends with Tamara Adama too. He never admitted it, but he had a rather large crush on her too.

Tamara was how he met her, too. Laura Estella Roslin was thirteen when they met her. And despite the fact that he was graduating, he still found himself laughing with her at one of Bill's follies with girls or secretly teaching her how to drink men twice her size under a table ( she later told him her Uncle Roland had taught her when she was eleven, but only after she'd drunk _him _under the table). She was gorgeous, too. She and Tamara (along, dutifully, with his mother) were the most beautiful girls in the twelve worlds and he'd been proud to be their protector along with Bill, even if they didn't need it.

He'd missed the girls and Bill terribly when he went away. Yet he and Tam grew closer as she joined him in Caprica City, where she was beginning art class. They always traveled home together until one day when he'd gotten the Virgon Flu and had to stay in the infirmary of the Training Academy.

Mrs. Adama and Tam left him with a little money for a train ride home and he waved goodbye from his hospital room's balcony before crawling back into bed.

When he woke, it was to a phone call he'd never forget.

Bill cried the entire length of the call, but he still managed to tell him that Tamara and his mother had been killed in a car accident not five miles from Caprica City. The car was a wreck the police said no one could have survived. Saul had dodged a bullet. Only thing was, he knew he loved Tamara by then, and it killed him inside. He later speculated it had been the catalyst for his drinking problem.

They'd survived, the three friends. And the day he came home after his illness was when he really became close to Laura. She was at the station when he arrived, Bill having refused even her visits after Tamara and Fiona's funeral. She was older, but still so small in his eyes.

Together they'd rebuilt William Adama, becoming family in the process. Bill joined him at the Training Academy and Laura excelled in school. They became happy again. But he'd never forgotten the long months of little Laura Roslin keeping his morale up as they'd struggled to repair the broken young man Tamara left behind. He adored her, though he'd never say it.

The war didn't change it at all. He'd been a shocked as Bill when she turned up, having lied her way into the service (she was only sixteen or so). But that they survived too, and for years he'd teased her about her stint in the brig.

He'd thought nothing could destroy them after the war, not even Carolanne's marriage to Bill (oh, how he hated that woman for her inability to understand their soldier's ways, as much as Laura hated Ellen for being a whore.).

Apparently he was wrong.

Standing next to Bill now, he has to ask, "Where was her ship." He knows the answer will break him even before Bill says "Sagittaron." and lowers his head. It was where Admiral Nagala had told them, just before he too died, that a huge Cylon fleet had attacked the docked vessels. _Pegasus _had been covered in an instant and, a bright flash later, was gone.

Laura was dead. His almost-little sister and the last link he had to the good old days of Tamara and he guarding their young 'siblings'. Thinking of Tamara hurt even more as his eyes fell upon an old photo of the four of them as kids, Tamara hugging Laura and grinning at her father as he took the photo. Now it was just two of them, Tamara's ghost still present but so far away. His missed her brightness and wit.Worse, as he looked at Bill, he saw what she and he had seen years before.

William Adama loved Laura Roslin, and now he'd live the rest of his days without her.

Saul lays a hand on Bill's shoulder, putting a glass in front of him (He can hear Tamara clicking her tongue in disappointment as he does so) and fills it.

Quietly, he raises his own shot of Ambrosia and salutes.

"To Laura. May she be in the Fields with Tam and Fiona and Joseph and everyone else we've said goodbye to."

Bill raised his shot too, eyes blue grey with regret.

"To Laura."


End file.
